GSV --
Gold Standard Ventures' attempt to raise $5 million at 63 cents a share with no warrants stems from a banker's connection to a publicly traded miner. "If we net about $5 million, we will have $8.5 million in the treasury," says CEO Jonathan Awde, fresh back from an Africa safari. The raise, via Macquarie Capital Markets in Canada, which is charging 6 percent commission, shallows or dilutes the common outstanding by about 10 percent, if it is successful. Mr. Awde said in the spring that no financing would occur below $1 for the Nevada gold project developer near Elko. "We got approached, and if it happens, we will have a (publicly traded) strategic partner," Jonathan said this morning, Tuesday. He called from Vancouver, Canada, to add that there is ground work, metallurgical testing and that sort of activity at Railroad, the project, but no current drilling. "I wish the price were higher, of course," he says.
TCR audience, I have no idea who the looming new partner is.
It could be any company in Nevada that has cash, I suppose: Paramount Gold (PZG), Allied Nevada (ANV)? We'll see in two weeks or so. I continue to have faith in the geology team at Railroad, led by David Mathewson, who has to be getting close to 70 years young now. No intention to take this off our
TCR list.
PLG --
Pilot Gold this week is reporting heady gold and silver results (with copper) from its 40-60 Teck venture at TV Tower, tucked atop Turkey's Biga Peninsula. A Pope research report out of Toronto summarizes the gold results published today. I thought this squib at the close of the official release, about the oxides in the bulk tonnage area, was a potential market mover:
"At the nearby Kayali bulk tonnage, oxide gold system approximately 1,400 metres have been completed with assays pending for four holes." Later today Tuesday, I will attend a California presentation by
Mark O'Dea on the other company in the O'Dea complex, True Gold (Burkina Faso). That is
TGM in Canada. True Gold is one of the Liberty Mutual companies we discussed the other day.
GCM -- Call me Ishmael. Rather, call me Ish-fool of the highest order.
Gran Colombia's removal of four board members is a cost-saving measure that connected shareholders tell me will save the battered gold and silver producer about $400,000 a year. Gran Colombia's shares, after a massive reverse split, have destroyed tens of millions of capital. I believe GCM in its next round of production and profit results from
Segovia in Colombia will show increased profit margins and ever-lower operating costs. So-called "all in" operating costs for pulling gold and silver ore out of the ground falls at some point will fall below $1,000 an ounce, probably when the new mill is in place in 2014. For now, we will have to be satisfied seeing the GCM complex get economic advantage from its 50-50 toll mining at Segovia and its rehabilitated Maria Dama mill there. I get a whale of abuse for making this one of our
TCR 8. This is because of my belief in Colombia as a mining nation, and my eyewitness reports of the ultra-rich veins in and around the rehabilitated Frontino, now Segovia.
I see today
Gran Colombia's silver-linked notes, tied to output at El Marmato in Colombia, now have a 12 percent dividend. The notes are senior unsecured obligations and trade publicly. Hedge funds and other aggressive investors have been shedding them like toxic bean pellets. Gran Colombia almost surely will seek to purchase its own crushed shares, and some of its own gold and silver notes, in the open market. Were I to see major shareholder U.S. Global in Texas sell its approximately 12 percent stake in GCM, I also would bolt. But U.S. Global on all fronts, from asset managers, buy-side analysts and its top executive tell me there is no way that will happen. Gran Colombia is now a grand levered gambit on the continued rise in gold and silver prices.
El Marmato gets almost no piece of the $30 million market cap of the equity. Go ahead, call me Ish-stupid-mail. I deserve it. I own GCM. I await the next round of output figures and expense levels.
On the non-TCR 8 front, Biocryst Pharmaceuticals after many years of failed drug trials and avian-flu headlines is getting more mojo today from its appointing of a medical doctor and scientists from TPG Biotech, an arm of the TPG (formerly Texas Pacific Group) private equity and asset management factory in San Francisco. His name is Fred Cohen. TPG is an investor in BCRX. I went through the BioCryst conference call on this week's other event, a safe Phase I trial for its small molecule plasma kallikrein inhibitor for the treatment of painful swelling known as hereditary angioedema. The shares, long suffering (I got involved as a reporter and an investor in 2006 or even earlier), are up about 250 percent in three weeks. I am still in the red on the shares.
Rango Energy: The geology and executive teams at Rango in California tell me there will be blood before we see any
hydraulic fracturing at the Kettleman Middle Dome projects under way via Rango Partner Hangtown Energy. Wanted that on the fracking record. (
RAGO in USA)
FINALLY, finally, that new
Global Natural Resources Certificate rose today on the bid about 4.5 percent,
Michael Kott of CM-Equity tells me from Munich. We reported on the new 60-company cert, or fund, earlier in the week.
At the following link we can see the certificate trading at the Frankfurt Exchange
https://www.scoach.de/de/Zertifikate/+CH0214965946.
Der ticker is
UBS1CM, says Mr. Kott. We shall see in six months whether the world needs an active managing of resource companies. Mr. Kott says CM-Equity's team will tune the index and company allocations on a daily basis to beat the performance of any equity resource electronic fund on planet Earth.
I was negligent in mentioning one of my Michael Kott stories the other day. Some year or two ago, Mr. Kott and his entire office staff in München greeted a group of us with a fine brunch-time layout of German, Austrian and Swiss delicacies, hard-beat backed by the raging (at the time) YouTube
F*** You Papandreou video ["Hey ho Galileo"] making its viral way across Europe. Greek crisis, remember?
Mr. Kott is too politic, too charismatic and a bit too photogenic to tell global resource investors F*** You XAU, HUI, GDX & GDXJ, among others. He is
der banker, after all. Still, this new certificate, and its accompanying index, offers YouTube users and institutions what looks like a sophisticated way to own a large collection of agriculture, metals, energy and so on companies, big and small. Mr. Kott says he will ask his team to look at putting
Ivanplats (
IVP in Canada) in the mix.
See F*** You article via Stockhouse.
Das ist alles, he said in German.
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